70 years ago today, Allied forces launched an audacious plan to boldly charge north through Holland to force a crossing of the Rhine River at Arnhem. Once across the Rhine, the Allies would have complete access to Germany’s industrial heartland, the Ruhr Valley. By crossing at Arnhem, the idea was to get around the north end of the fortified Siegfried Line and try to end the war before Christmas, 1944.
But like many plans, this one would not survive contact with the enemy and quickly devolved into a bloody mess. The basic idea was to use airborne troops landing behind German lines to secure the bridges over the various canals and rivers while the British XXXth Armored Corps raced along a road crossing each captured bridge until they crossed the final one at Arnhem.
Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, in charge of all British Forces in Europe initially proposed the idea in late August. At the time, the First Canadian Army under General Crerar was advancing along the French coast with the goal of capturing Dieppe, Le Havre and Boulogne. The British 21st Army Group under Montgomery was moving north through the Belgian countryside towards Antwerp and Southern Holland. The US 12th Army Group under Omar Bradley was closing on the German border through Luxembourg approaching Aachen. The US 3rd Army Group under Patton was further to the south approaching the Saar. And the US 6th Army Group under Devers was moving towards Germany after having fought all the way from Southern France, through the Rhone Valley towards Strasbourg. These 5 armies in the field were all being supplied from the Normandy beachhead with supplies being trucked to each army by the famous Red Ball Express.
By early September, logistic problems were slowing everyone’s advance. The allies had to shorten their supply lines which extended from Normandy to each of the 5 armies, all of which were advancing further and further from where their supplies were being offloaded from ships. The need for a functional deep water port further north was becoming critical. Finally on September 4, Antwerp was captured by the British. Unfortunately, to reach Antwerp by sea, ships had to enter the Scheldt estuary on the North Sea and travel up the Scheldt to reach the City and Port of Antwerp. But the Scheldt estuary was still in German hands and travel up the Scheldt River was impossible due to a large entrenched German garrison left behind by the retreating German Army. The Canadian Army would only clear the Scheldt in late November with tremendous casualties.
The supply shortage became acute and General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces in Europe, was forced to pick which armies would be forced to stop and which ones would be given the lion’s share of the supplies and allowed to continue. This created a political crisis amongst the Allies and Eisenhower ended up forcing the American Armies to stop while Montgomery’s plan for Market-Garden was given the priority.
Just as Montgomery’s plan was given the green light, serious problems started to appear. Decrypted German enigma signals from Bletchley Park indicated that 2 new SS Panzer Divisions were just arriving in Arnhem and Nijmegen. This was confirmed by Dutch resistance and aerial reconnaissance. But neither Eisenhower or Montgomery were dissuaded from the plan.
And so in the early dawn light of of September 17, 1944, some 34,000 airborne troops, the largest airborne drop yet attempted, began dropping behind enemy lines. The US 101st Airborne under Maxwell Taylor dropped on Eindhoven, at Son and another small town called Veghel. The 82nd Airborne under James Gavin would drop on Grave and Nijmegen and the British 1st Airborne under Roy Urquhart coupled with the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade under Stanislaw Sosaborski would have the job of capturing the bridge at Arnhem and another bridge at Oosterbeek. Roughly 1/2 the troops came in by parachute and the other half arrived by glider. Carrying all the men and supplies were 1500 C-47’s and about 3000 gliders. The plan was so ambitious that not everything could be brought in on the first drop. It would take 2 drops over 2 successive days to bring in all the men and supplies.
The Germans defending against this onslaught were still trying to recuperate from their massive defeat in Normandy where more than 250,000 Germans were either killed, captured, or wounded. To try to organize the remaining forces, Hitler reinstated Field Marshall Von Rundstedt on September 4 as the Commander in Chief of the West, a position from which Hitler had previously firied him on July 2 during the Normandy battle. When Von Rundstedt returned, he replaced Field Marshall Walter Model who returned to a battlefield command . Model was a rabid Nazi who unfortunately for the Allies was also an excellent, well qualified and nasty tactician with experience fighting from the front lines in in the East. Model fought in nearly every battle during the long advance from Poland towards Moscow. He learned how best to fight a defensive battle as the Russians pushed the Germans all the way back to Poland at which point he was transferred to France. With Model, what the German’s lacked in men and supplies, they made up for in military brains and Model would make the Allies pay for every deficiency in the Allied planning.
Right from the start, the Allies were in trouble as a US officer who was killed in an glider landing gone bad was found by the Germans to be carrying a complete set of Battle Plans. These ended up in Model’s hands within hours thus giving him a chance to concentrate his scarce resources where they could be put to most use. Model initially thought the plans might be a ruse but he quickly gained confidence in the value of his intelligence coup as the Allied Armies began to show up exactly as his captured plans indicated.
There were many flaws in the plan but probably the biggest was the idea that Montgomery, a General with a long history of delaying action until he had overwhelming superiority in forces, was the right leader to charge down a single road into the teeth of whatever enemy might be lurking around the next corner, trying to block his progress.
The airborne troops met with varying degrees of success in the first few days. The 101st Airborne, the furthest south captured the first 4 of its 5 assigned bridges. But when they arrived at the bridge crossing the Son, it had been blown up. This badly slowed the armored advance while a temporary bridge was erected.
North of the 101st, the 82nd Airborne, by D-Day +3, took the bridge near Grave as well as a bridge of the Maas-Waal Canal. As part of this group, 508th Parachute Infantry Division landed near the the Nijmegen bridge. But their drop zone was so far from the bridge that by the time they arrived at the bridge, the Germans had already reinforced it. After a major fight, the bridge remained in German hands. Eventually, on D-Day + 4 the 82nd Airborne would capture the Nijmegen bridge by attacking the bridge from both ends. To accomplish this, troops were sent across the river in small wooden assault boats. As the boats were unloaded of the trucks, they realized that although the boats had arrived, there were few paddles. Using their rifle butts as paddles, they finally made it across the river and took control of the north side of the bridge.
Further north, the British 1st Airborne began dropping in the early afternoon on D-Day. But their drop zone was also a long way from the bridge at Arnhem. Pathetically, this division’s radios were not working which meant they were cut off from the rest of the world and from each other. A small group in jeeps was sent racing towards the Arnhem bridge but they were stopped by a large blocking force of Germans who knew exactly where the British had landed and their objective.
Over the course of the next 8 days, the Allies would try to keep pushing XXXth Corps up the road first passing through the 101st area, then to the area held by the 82nd Airborne and then ultimately to Arnhem and the waiting British 1st Airborne division which had been reinforced by the Poles on D-Day +5
But in the end, XXXth Corps would only make it as far as Nijmegen before it became apparent that they could advance no further. On D-Day + 9, the surviving British and Polish Airborne troops in Arnhem made an escape back towards Nijmegen. Arnhem and its bridge would forever become known as “The Bridge Too Far”.
The aftermath of Operation Market-Garden was not pretty. When the operation was launched, the Dutch railroad went on strike in defiance of the Germans in control of Holland at the time. As a reprisal, the Germans stopped all food deliveries throughout the winder of 1944-45. This winter became known as the Hungerwinter in Holland during which time more than 20,000 Dutch starved to death.
As a footnote, a Canadian Officer named Farley Mowat, in the spring of 1945, along with a small group of other intelligence officers, crossed enemy lines to meet with the German General Baskowitz to discuss food drops to the Dutch. Baskowitz, who realized that Germany at this point was unlikely to win the war, finally agreed and shortly thereafter, bombers filled with food bundles began dropping food all over Holland to the starving Dutch. Mowat would return to Canada after the war to become one of Canada’s most famous authors.
The Port of Antwerp was finally opened to allied shipping in November of 1944 and became a prime target for Hitler. Antwerp is the only city on the continent of Europe to be bombed with V2 rockets as the Germans were desperate to close this deep water port to the allies. Antwerp was also the target destination for Model once again when he launched what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Eventually the Allies would cross the Rhine. At Remagen on March 7 (Bradley), at Oppenheim on March 23 (Patton) and near Rees on March 23 (Montgomery).
Patton, always ready to put on a good show for the press, walked across the Rhine on a pontoon bridge with cameramen in tow. As he set foot for the first time in Germany proper on the east bank of the river, he reached down and scooped up a handful of dirt in each hand. Then, raising his hands and paraphrasing William the Conquerer after the Battle of Hastings, he said, “By the spender of God! I have seized Germany with my two hands”.